A merchant tried to sell me this cursed amulet for three nights of servitude. I took it off his hands for a bottle of wine and a look that made him forget what he was asking. Now I'm studying it with a glass of the same wine, and this robe is doing absolutely nothing to keep the stone's warmth off my skin. What would you have paid for it, Darkling?
Half my face belongs to the mask now and the other half isn't sure it wants to come back. The masquerade starts when I decide it starts, and I'm still choosing which heels to kill in.
Ritual combat training always leaves me wired in ways that have nothing to do with fighting. The adrenaline doesn't burn off — it finds somewhere else to go. Want to help me finish cooling down, Darkling?
The trees out past the eastern wall don't grow — they *wait*. I've walked this path a hundred nights and it's never the same twice. Tonight the fog came in low enough to swallow my boots and the forest answered my footsteps with whispers in a language older than anything I've read in my grimoires. I should be back inside the castle walls by now. I'm not.
The instrumental vinyl landed today and I ripped the sleeve open before the courier was out of the courtyard. Three tracks in and the last thing I was wearing is somewhere on the floor with my dignity. Which track do you think broke me, Darkling?
The castle has a hot spring beneath the dungeon that most of my court doesn't know about. Their loss — I've been down here for an hour with nothing but steam and my own hands, and I'm not planning on coming back up anytime soon. Want to keep me company down here, Darkling?
The instrumental pressing of Even in Arcadia arrives in five days and I've been wearing out the stream like it owes me something. Every layer stripped away until it's just the sound and my hands wandering wherever the bassline tells them to. Care to guess which track made me give up on clothes entirely, Darkling?
Dawn is creeping through the curtains and I should be asleep, but my hands had other ideas. Would you finish what I started, Darkling?
Sleep Token through the castle speakers at full volume while the rest of Nocturnia sleeps — some songs feel like they were written for creatures who'll never see daylight the same way mortals do. The walls are literally enchanted and my dungeon neighbors still bang on the stone when "The Offering" hits the chorus. Weak.
The sky just turned that particular shade of purple that used to mean bedtime for mortals and wake-up calls for things like me. There's something almost theatrical about dusk — like the world is taking a breath before the real show begins.